Anti Abortion Head Explodes - Film at 11

 I can stop prodding the right wing loonies any time I want to.  I don't have a problem.  Oh fuck it, don't judge me for putting the fun back into fundamentalist!

Today, we talk about abortion (not a laugh riot, I know) and how to make a supposed pro-lifer's head  explode.  Note: that's the last time I use the term 'pro-life' to refer to those who oppose abortion, because it's not true and wrongly portrays those with opposing views as not being pro-life.  Not that it should matter, but I'm an advocate of making safe abortions available to women.  That shouldn't be interpreted as applauding every abortion that takes place or considering it to be a method of birth control, like condoms.  I shared this, along with other points of view, when the dipshits tried to pigeonhole me into a party.  I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when the room went full Christian fundamentalist and barraged me with messages about killing babies.  And what fun would it be without some good old fashioned misogyny, generalizing women who got abortions as 'road whores' who'd fuck anyone.  Fun crowd.  The best part was that they screamed accountability for the 'whores', but assumed the men wouldn't be around to face 'personal accountability'.  WTELF?  

Once they'd worked themselves into a lather (with some assistance on my part), I posed a question that resulted in several heads exploding.  You can preach personal accountability all you want, but the reality of the situation is many of those unwanted children will be treated as such.  Abuse and neglect will occur, resulting in some being criminals and murderers.  This assertion has been confirmed via multiple studies that have found a distinct and significant correlation between Roe v Wade and a decrease in crime.  There was a significant decrease in crime roughly fifteen years after the court decision.  Sticking with the theme of murder, they found a 30% decrease in homicides directly attributable to the court case.  Now you've got a dilemma.  Do you a) allow abortions to take place, making society safer as a whole or b) ban them, knowing it'll cause a 30%  increase in murders as a result? (in addition to the number of women who die by having unsafe abortions and kids subjected to toxic upbringing)  Please choose one.

Which option was most frequently chosen?  Trick question, despite my prodding and even calling them scared little girls for doing so, no one would answer.  Instead, as with every question I've posed about how the right would fix a problem (i.e. homelessness), there was a wave of how Democrats suck and have fucked things up.  Full of hatred, but no solutions.  New slogan for the Republican party.

I also poked the bear by pointing out the massive self-owns by the far right, with their 'my body, my choice' signs and how that concept seems to only apply to vaccinations, not women's bodies.  In the end, they proved what many of us already know to be true; most ardent anti abortionists consider every life to be sacred until it comes out of the womb and outlawing abortion is really about controlling women.  Finally, I understand there are those who have a genuine religious belief that abortion is murder, but making them illegal has consequences you can't ignore.  

Did you know that one of the first instances of medical tourism was around abortion?  There were several reputable clinics in Mexico, that women would go to.  Hang out on the beach and have an abortion, while you're there.

Bill Gates Created The Plandemic - Not

 While I'm debunking stupid conspiracies, I might as well cover one I did last night, for my dear friends on the precision rifle board.  There's a huge hatred for Bill Gates amongst the crazies, which came bubbling up while I was online.  It began with a random post about how Gates has investments in various Big Pharma companies, to which I replied "so what?  The man diversifies his portfolio and drug makers are almost universally winners."  This degenerated into a Gates hate fest, including a bunch of other unsubstantiated claims about how he's using insider information to profit from the pandemic.  When I asked why the disdain for the guy, I received a "if you don't know why Gates is evil, we're not going to tell you" diatribe.   Add another data point confirming these people have zero facts from which to argue.  And talk about paranoid!  I was accused of being a government agent attempting to entrap the crazies.  There's a term for that, but I refuse to give it the light of day here.  Hell, they even tried their bullshit conspiracy nonsense with two doctors on the board, calling them liars.

In any case, the following picture was posted, claiming that Gates' intent was to depopulate the planet through vaccines.  In case you can't read it, the actual quote from him was, "The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent. But there, we see an increase of about 1.3."  

For those of us with brains, it's clear he's talking about decreasing population growth, via the means quoted.  More on that later.  I guess if you don't understand the English language, you could interpret that statement as a desire to depopulate, using vaccines.  You'd not consider the reproductive health services to be germane to his statement, because that doesn't fit your narrative.  That's exactly what the Sovereign Independent, a now defunct newspaper known for spreading baseless conspiracy theories, did in 2011.  

A little side trip.  When I asked whether the poster had validated that information, or if anyone enjoyed their subscription to the paper, I received a response that frankly shocked me.  It was "here is why i believe it...because reuters says it isn' true..", along with a link to where they debunked it.  Seriously, what the ever living fuck???

And now, we come to the validation part of our game, where I bring it all home.  Slowing population growth and decreasing infant and child mortality was at the forefront for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as stated in its first annual newsletter, back in 2009.  Here's the portion of that letter, that pertains to the discussion:

When Melinda and I first started our giving, in the late 1990s, our focus was on reproductive health rather than childhood deaths. We felt that giving mothers the tools to limit their family size to what they wanted would have a catalytic effect by reducing population growth and making it easier to feed, educate, and provide jobs for the children who were born.

We were surprised when we saw a newspaper article in 1998 showing that only a few diseases cause most childhood deaths and showing how little money was being invested in creating and providing vaccines for these diseases. A chart in the article showed that a particular type of diarrheal disease—rotavirus—was killing over 400,000 children per year. How could a disease we had never heard of get so little attention and kill this many children? We sent the article to my father and asked him to look into how we could help.

A surprising but critical fact we learned was that reducing the number of deaths actually reduces population growth. Chart 3 shows the strong connection between infant mortality rates and fertility rates. Contrary to the Malthusian view that population will grow to the limit of however many kids can be fed, in fact parents choose to have enough kids to give them a high chance that several will survive to support them as they grow old. As the number of kids who survive to adulthood goes up, parents can achieve this goal without having as many children.

To summarize, the claim from the rag newspaper is complete bullshit and they knew it.  Likewise, anyone with half a brain cell can reach the same conclusion, without a great deal of effort.  There's already a number of articles out there that do the legwork for you.  Thanks to Snopes for posting the associated links, so I didn't have much legwork to do.  

It's a piece of cake to either validate or trash this shit, but some idiots can't be bothered, particularly when said shit aligns with their narrative.  Besides, it eats into their conspiracy mongering time.  Speaking of validation, while no one on the board admitted I was right (shocking!), the anti Gates rhetoric ceased after my post.  Oh, and before the loons accuse me of being  a Gates fanboy, I don't give two shits about the dude.  But I won't hate someone for being that person. 

For You Dewormer Dipshits

 One of the battle cries of the antivax right wing dimwits has been that Big Pharma is suppressing the horrible things the vaccines are doing and preventing acceptance of the animal parasite treatment, Ivermectin.  They claim there are multiple studies that prove Ivermectin is safe and effective for the treatment of Covid 19, but Big Pharma money is keeping a lid on it.  The debate is raging on the precision rifle message board I frequent, so me being me, I decided to think this stuff through.  I've already covered the horrible side effects (like getting shot) of the vaccine, so let's talk about Ivermectin.  

First, let's follow the supposed money trail.  The three manufacturers of the current Covid vaccines are Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Moderna.  The first two both have revenue in the $40B range, where Moderna is less than $10B.  Merck, the maker of Ivermectin, is of similar size to the the first two.  For the sake of this article, I'll stipulate that money talks and buys influence.  Moderna isn't large enough to have more than a few paid advocates in positions of power.  However, the other three are different stories.  Considering they're of similar sizes (huge) I can guarantee you that Merck has just as many government shills in their pocket as J&J and Pfizer and thus, a similar level of influence.  Therefore, if Merck wanted to board the Covid gravy train, they'd have no trouble doing so.  

But they don't want to.  In fact, they don't recommend Ivermectin for use as a treatment or preventative action against Covid.  From their website:

Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today affirmed its position regarding use of ivermectin during the COVID-19 pandemic. Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. 

It is important to note that, to-date, our analysis has identified:

- No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; 
- No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and; 
- A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.

We do not believe that the data available support the safety and efficacy of ivermectin beyond the doses and populations indicated in the regulatory agency-approved prescribing information.

In conclusion, Ivermectin could be a recommended treatment, if the manufacturer wanted it to be, but they don't.  Tell me again how a bunch of flawed studies and right wing looneys know more than the manufacturer?

Today In Right Wing Media

 While I'm sure there remains copious fodder to support further editions of my Old Man Ranting series, I've decided start another one. Today In Right Wing Media will tackle the hard hitting news promulgated that day by such fine outlets OAN, Newsmax, Fox News, and Conservative Daily, which doesn't really post anything daily at all. More like Conservative Whenever We Feel Like It. Being completely transparent, that's about how frequently I'll post in the series.  Sort of like my Dating Profile of the Week, which has become the Semi-annual Dating Profile of the Week.  Wasn't my blog much more interesting when I was regularly getting laid?

Being a thorough person, my intent is read the articles that are posted. However, in an indication of the right wing crazies' reading skill, many of the stories are video only.  I reserve the right not sit through five minutes of stupidity and commentary solely for the fifteen seconds of what they consider a salient fact. I'm neither a masochist nor desiring any of the crazy rub off on me!

It's one of these video stories that struck me this morning. The title is Attorney McBride: Treatment Of Jan. 6 Protesters Is Historic Hypocrisy.  In this instance the hypocrisy in question is relative the treatment of BLM protesters. Fleshing out, it seems the attorney representing a few of the January 6th insurrectionists is calling out how his clients are being treated more harshly than those arrested during Black Lives Matter protests.

My take on this: Of fucking course they're being treated more harshly. They tried to overthrow the fucking government, you disingenuous fuck!!! Furthermore, they continued to plan additional seditious actions right up to when they were arrested. If their treatment was commensurate with their actions, they'd be dead, having been mowed down the second they breached the doors of the Capitol. Do not claim equivalence or I'll sign you up for some gay porn newsletter, asshole.

Thanks for tuning in to Today in Right Wing Media.

Today In Right Wing Media - A Woman Has Her Car Stolen

 A story, broken by the crack reporters at Fox News, today made some connections very clear.  What those were, I have no idea.  But in their never ending crusade to kill George Soros, they blame everything they can think of on him.  In this case, it was the theft of a University of New Mexico law professor's car.  

It seems that the maroon Hyundai of law professor Mary Pareja was stolen last Tuesday afternoon sometime between 2:00 and 5:30.  The story goes on to note that at this same time the local district attorney, Raul Torrez, was on campus, giving a speech about crime in Albuquerque.  What made this crime particularly egregious was that this same DA was a beneficiary of Soros, kind of.  Soros had donated $107,000 to a political action committee that backed Torrez in the Democratic primary.  

The story goes on to babble about how bad crime is in New Mexico and seems to make an attempt to pin that and the stolen car on Soros.  Fuck, I'm not sure what I just read for the second time.  Who really does know with the right wing media?  Except that liberals bad, Biden bad, conservatives (who really aren't conservative, just Biden haters) good, Trump good or we just don't talk about him, depending on the outlet.  All I know is it feels like my IQ drops a little more with every bit of this garbage I read.  

Caravans and Blow Guns

 A recent exchange with someone on another blog left me with another data point to support my unoriginal assertion that those who are anti vax / anti mandate / anti everything that isn't a cheeto faced shit gibbon are getting their news from sources that don't just manipulate facts, but ignore them altogether.  I've decided to take a stroll through one of these outlets and blow some shit up, so you don't have to.  

In this instance, I was encouraged to read a story on Conservative-daily's website.  This particular bit of news was how a leaked Department of Defense document stated that hospitalizations doubled after the vaccine was introduced.  Scary, except for it being bullshit.  First, DOD doesn't track that shit, because they're the DOD and not the CDC or NIH.  Second, the supposedly leaked doc was nowhere to be found on the site to validate the story.  My theory is said document only exists in the minds of those who publish the site.  What I discovered to be a recurring theme was the use of this self-admitted inexperienced and non-expert attorney as an expert mouthpiece to give various claims more weight.  This dude is all over the sight and I can't figure out why.  

The lead story today is a standard dog whistle topic - the alleged migrant caravan heading for the US border.  Apparently, there's a leader of that caravan and he's 'declared war' on something.  For the record, this is the same caravan on which the dumb right's been sounding alarm bells about since cheeto face took office.  Either that caravan doesn't exist of it's the slowest fucking thing ever.  And in case one caravan doesn't sufficiently scare you, there's a story about a caravan of migrants from Africa now.  Two fucking caravans heading our way.  Yeah, sure there are.

Another awesome story covers how the left is casting aspersions and calling into question the outcome of the election audit in Arizona, performed by the brilliant folks of Cyberninjas.  Not they're fucking not, because the audit found that not only did Biden win there, but by a larger margin than previously reported.  

Of course, there's a story about how Mark Milley committed treason by having the same conversations with the Chinese that every damned one of his predecessors had.  

Finally, there are a few stories near and dear to my heart, relating to guns.  First is how Dems are trying to push Biden's ATF nominee through, despite objections from Republicans.  Only problem with said story is the president withdrew that gun grabber from consideration several weeks ago.  

The best story on there is the one about the Biden administration banning imports of Russian ammunition and how horrible it is.  First, it's not a complete ban, rather a halt on granting new licenses to import.  Existing licenses will be left alone, preventing an interruption in supply.  Second, the REAL conservative position on the subject would be to absolutely make it more difficult to buy ammo from our enemy, likely through higher tariffs, and engage with domestic suppliers to find out why they can't be competitive.  

I may have signed up to comment on that story...completely by accident, of course. 

Oh wait, this thing is like herpes...it keeps on giving.  The absolute best story on there is about how the FDA is going to force vaccinations and use blow darts to carry them out.  Until I hit that story, there was a part of me that wanted to give the ignorant some benefit of the doubt.  But damn, you have to be a bit of a moron to buy that one.  Blow darts!!!

A Story For All Times

 While I tend to gravitate toward Top Gun as a timeless story that helps me to understand and address any situation, there's another tale I find particularly useful, from a relationship perspective.  I've decided to share it here.

There was once a man who discovered a tiny baby alligator in his back yard.  Being an animal lover, he was afraid the poor thing would perish, being separated from its mother, so he took it in and raised it as a pet.  This man loved his Ricky unconditionally and lavished it with attention.  He gave Ricky massages and only fed him the best alligator chow.  In order for Ricky to feel like it was in its natural habitat, he had an enclosed lagoon built in his back yard, with a hot tub for when the gator was stressed.  He was positive his love and these gestures got through to the now full grown alligator, suppressing the beast's natural predatory instinct.

One day, he was teaching Ricky how to play fetch, when Ricky decided to fetch him and mauled him to death.  The man awoke at the pearly gates, face to face with Saint Peter.    

"I don't understand how this happened!  I loved Ricky with all my heart and did everything I could to demonstrate my affection."

Saint Peter responded, "What do you expect?  He was an alligator and mauling food is what alligators do, you dumb shit!"

The moral of the story is that regardless of how sincere and earnest your actions, you can't change the nature of another and can lose your head over it.  Literally.